Marketing Artwork Online - check out Fine Art America

Several years ago, I was encouraged by friends to sell artwork I was creating for annual calendars I was giving to clients of my marketing business. I thought it would be relatively simple to convert the calendars into something "public", rather than branded for my business, and set up a shop on Etsy to sell them. That part was relatively simple, but the "selling" part is not simple at all. Getting your work in front of potential buyers at the time they want to make a purchase is very hard to do.

I realize that it takes perseverance and attention to detail, and I continue to work on honing what I offer, pricing, keywords, promoting through Etsy teams, etc. But the real fact of the matter is that Etsy is an ENORMOUS marketplace with tons of very cool artwork (as well as some weird, and/or trinkety items). Any search you do yields pages and pages of items similar to each other. For every greeting card I put out there, there are thousands that are somewhat similar.

On the good news side, of the few sales I've made, I have achieved 100% positive ratings when the buyer comes back to rate their purchase, so that tells me I'm doing something right!

In addition to Etsy, there are myriad other art and/or crafts marketplaces online where you can list your items. Some are free, some charge a monthly fee, none have the traffic Etsy generates. I have played around with a few of those, but the reality is that I just don't have time to babysit shops with listings on multiple sites. If you decide not to offer something anymore, or to change the price on something, you have to remember to go to ALL the online venues and change that info.

I recently came across an online venue for selling art and photography called Fine Art America. The cool thing about it is that you can set up your own gallery for free, you set the price you want to sell your art for (the use of your digital art OR original pieces). They produce prints from your digital uploads based on the customer orders and they facilitate putting the customer in touch with you to purchase the original of something. They do all the fulfillment except for originals.

I am a very new member on FAA and have been working on how to get the word out. Like Etsy, FAA is filled with magnificent artwork and photography, so again, tough to get seen in any sort of search by a potential buyer. You can see my own gallery of work here - I am continuing to add to it by going through my files of digital photography and artwork and deciding what to post.

This is a card from my Etsy shop made with the
image of these colts

As a for-instance, I have posted a posterized version of a photo I took several years ago of two draft horse colts meeting for the first time - all excited, necks arched, ears forward.

I am sponsoring a page of horse art in order to bring this image onto the first page of a search on FAA for "horses". horses art

I plan to sponsor some other pages too - if you like the topic and you follow the links I post, you'll be able to go through pages of amazing paintings and photographs and digitally modified images - too cool!

Visit Fine Art America and have some fun!





Here are some other links where you can find me:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/TheElderberryBlossom
https://www.facebook.com/ElderberryBlossom
http://www.pinterest.com/csfgirl1/
http://www.craftsy.com/user/2998727/pattern-store